“Sink”

April 5, 2018

Sink me into the deep

as I lay awake

losing sleep

I am a castaway

in my mind

My sanity is

hard to find

I am lost

behind the glass

in a box

fading fast

Drowning in an ocean

I cave in from emotion

No more can I explain

my life inside this pain

As true numbness

washes over me

the light gets harder to see

Will I be saved?

Or will I sink

while I’m still awake…

Sooo much has happened to me this year already, I am completely overwhelmed. Yet, I feel nothing.  Does that make sense?  I can’t tell the difference between disassociation and stability.  Am I detached? Or is this what it’s like to feel stable?

What Is Stability?

The actual definition of Stable is: (of a person) “sane and sensible; not easily upset or disturbed”. 

I find this confusing. When I look back at all the times other people viewed me as “stable”, I felt like I was in a trance.  During those times in my life, I had created the other Shelby as a way to escape from everything.  Was my stability merely me creating a dissociative personality that was a stable version of myself?   Is the only way I can feel stable, is to feel nothing? 

Don’t get me wrong, I have felt pretty damn good these last few years because of being in a stable environment. There was a lot of things making it easy for me to be okay, but when times did get tough, it was like I was shut down completely. These last few months have been filled with anxiety, stress, heartbreak, and confusion.  But somehow, I have remained eerily calm through it all.  So calm in fact, that people haven’t believed me if I said something is wrong.

It’s like I don’t even know the healthy way to react to things anymore.

Why Detach?

As I’ve written about in the past, my childhood was never the easiest, I was forced to be the strong one at a young age.  And being “strong” meant showing no emotion. So that is when the “other Shelby” was created yada yada….

  As time went on, it’s always just been so easy for me to take the easy way out, and use my mental illness as an excuse to lose it.  If you were a witness to my episodes throughout life, you would see I go through a cycle of about every emotion in the book. My hands clenched and punching walls and scratching my neck, face crinkled in pain to ending with my eyes drooping and my body limp, weak from letting go of everything seeping into the numbness–washing away all my pain and sorrow. I’m exhausted.

It really hasn’t occurred to me until recent questionable moments, how much all of that immense emotion and physical reactions could affect me in the future.

What if I’m over feeling nothing? What if I wanna feel it all again?

Did I choose this path?  My mom says I was born a combination of protector and caregiver. When I was 11 months old, my mom said I would wrap a blanket around my baby doll that was almost as big as me, pat her on the head and rock her to sleep.  At 3 years old I was giving her life advice.  She describes me as a mother grizzly bear, no one would dare mess with my cubs because I will eat them alive.  I’ve always taken care of the people I love, and that means protecting them.  If that meant beating up bullies that had made fun of my best friend on the playground, scrutinizing and intimidating every girl that my brothers date, or burying my fear so I can be strong when my mom was sick. I do what needs to be done to make sure no one hurts the people I love.  Was I forced to be the strong one at a young age, or did I just want to protect my loved ones so I became as strong as an adult?  Was I forced to be strong in my abusive relationship, was I forced to be strong when my partner started showing signs of mental illness too.  Or was this just me choosing their needs before mine because that is all I have known how to be is the “strong one”.

I’m sick of whenever my therapist asks how I’m handling everything, having to answer with “I honestly don’t know”.   I’ve spent the last few years trying so hard to stay in control and not be “reactionary”.   I have become a master at separating my emotions & reactions and have replaced “acting crazy” with “behaving rationally” and “reacting appropriately”.   But, I don’t know this person anymore.  Is this healthy behavior? The lines have blurred between intentional detachment, involuntary disassociation, and stability.  I don’t know if this is how I am supposed to be handling situations.  But if it is…I don’t like it. I want to freak out. I want to cry for hours.  I want to unload on someone and make them realize how much pain I’m actually in. I want to lose my shit.

I’m over it.

Who is going to take care of me?

I am now 24, I’m no longer 8 years old forcing myself to be an adult. I am an adult with adult responsibilities trying to create a stable life for myself, trying to remain as self-aware as possible, trying to get married, start a family.  I know I can’t move forward if I can’t understand why I continue to cut myself off from everything.  I know that I have chosen relationships based on my insecurities and my need for control.  I’ve put myself in relationships where I had to be the strong one, because if I’m strong enough… they won’t leave.

For the first time in my life, I think I deserve more.  I don’t want to have to be the strong one.  I want to be around somebody who is ready, willing and strong enough to take care of me and everything that comes with it.  That includes me losing my shit, and telling them how I feel.

Afraid of the Storm.

But will I find someone who will accept me?  Will they be strong enough to handle me?  I completely understand that I can be a lot to take on, but guess what… I can’t do this anymore! I need to be able to get this pain, sorrow, and aggression out without feeling scared that I’m going to be told I’m crazy, that I’m going to be judged… that everything is going to come crashing down.  If I can’t, how am I going to continue to learn and grow?  I can’t keep this in forever.

But I’m afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I opened those floodgates of emotions. Would I drown? 

Yet here I am, I can’t hate on what detachment and dissociation have done for me because I wouldn’t be where I am without them. I wouldn’t be who I am.  But is this impending storm inside of me the other Shelby trying to escape? Or am I just stable enough to hold her back? Is holding her back only making the storm bigger?

I have so many questions…only time will tell.